Security devices, such as firewalls, can provide the first line of defense in an organization's network security infrastructure. They do so by matching corporate policies about users' network access rights to connection information surrounding each access attempt. If the user rights and connection information do not match, the firewall blocks the access connection. If the user rights and connection information do match, the firewall allows the traffic to flow through the network. In this way, a firewall forms the basic building block of an organization's network security architecture.
It is desirable to employ security device technology that can grow with the increasing growth of network traffic, including voice, video, and collaborative traffic that operate at increasingly higher speeds. Firewalls, for example, are presently configured to analyze traffic not only at Layer 2 and Layer 3, but are now also being configured to provide application-level inspection to examine, identify, and verify application types at Layer 7 to make sure unwanted or misbehaving application traffic does not join the network. With these capabilities, a firewall can enforce endpoint user registration and authentication and provide administrative control over the use of multimedia applications. With both increased traffic and increased operational demands, firewalls and other security devices have recently been configured to operate in security device “clusters,” with each such cluster comprising a plurality of firewalls and/or other security devices.